Tips and tricks for searching in Google Scholar
Keep a phrase together
- put the phrase in quotes
- example: "diabetes mellitus" returns only those articles that have that exact phrase.
Get a citation in APA, MLA, or other format
- click on the " sign (the double quotation mark) underneath the result.
Find similar articles
- click on either "Related articles" or "cited by" underneath the result.
Limit your results to a certain file type (i.e. you can limit results to those with full text by finding only those that have a PDF)
- after your keywords, type filetype: (Note: no space after the colon)
- example: diabetes filetype:PDF returns only results that have a PDF associated with them
Eliminate search terms
- use the minus symbol before the word you want excluded
- example: diabetes -gestational returns results related to diabetes but eliminates those that mention the word "gestational." Use this with caution, as sometimes this eliminates good results too. For example, an article that talks about Type I diabetes, Type II diabetes and gestational diabetes will NOT be returned; it would be eliminated because it has the word "gestational" in it.
Export citations as an RIS file
- save the citations you want by clicking the star (first item on the left on the line under the citation). This puts them into your library. Items will stay in your library until you choose to delete them, so you can do many searches on different days and they will remain in your library. When you are ready to export, go into My Library (upper right) and click the box that selects all. Next click the icon for Export, then choose RefMan. This creates a file in RIS format. It will show up in your Downloads folder.
Proximity Searches
- For example: (bacteria OR microbiome) AROUND(3) (cancer OR neoplasm)
Want to do an Advanced Search? From the main Google Scholar search screen, click on More (the three bars on top of each other, to the left of the Google logo).
